Comments and Santa

Day 35

Cybermoron from the EeeUser forum informed me that comments weren't working (thanks, Steve!), so if you were interesting in sharing your thoughts, please do so - the problem has been fixed. And here I thought I was writing to myself! At least I know it was a problem with the comments on my blog and not with the content. I was afraid it was coming across as tasteless or obscene.

The approaching holiday season has given me an opportunity to do a little street team work for the Eee PC. For the past month it has gone pretty much everywhere with me; it has raised some eyebrows, and sparked some interesting conversations. I've made sure to contribute to these honestly and fairly, revealing all the cons as well as pros to owning this little guy. Most agree that the positive outweighs the negative; I know of at least two Asus Eee PCs that have been purchased because of me - One of my colleagues purchased one for each of her two children. There were others that had only heard whispers of these things known as netbooks, and I'd like to think I shed enough light on the subject to persuade them to seriously consider buying one to put under the Christmas tree.

If you've managed to avoid the naughty list this year, here's why you should ask Santa for an Asus Eee PC.

• Excellent battery life - With screen brightness at about 60% and wireless on, I get almost 4 hours of intermittent use before needing to plug in.
  
• Basic Mode & Advanced Mode - With Xandros Linux you get something not available on Windows - a choice for user interface.
• Portability - I carry mine around like it's a hardcover book. It I were a woman and had a purse, it would easily fit in there next to (or in place of!) the daily planner and Blackberry.
  
• Price and Compatibility - It's under $300 and it's 99% compatible with proprietary applications such as Microsoft Office.

Thanksgiving with the Eee

Day 23

I went to my Mom's house for Thanksgiving, and after too much turkey and fixings, my brothers and I ended up on the couch - me with the Eee, and them with their Macbooks. Here's what I observed:

1. The Macbooks discovered the unencrypted wireless signal way faster than the Eee. In fact, when I first searched for it nothing showed. Only after I turned wifi off then on again could I begin the lengthy process of waiting for the signal to change from pending to enabled.
2. Battery life on the Eee is much better than the Macbook. After an evening of sharing favorite sites, blogs, and trying to RickRoll each other, the Eee's battery life was 60% and the Macbook was at 50%. Realistically, this means the Eee would outlive the Macbook by about an hour.
   
3. According to my mom, size does matter. She said I looked funny sitting next to the other, larger Macbooks.

Dorks.

Pros and Cons

Day 8

Well, I made it though my first week with the Asus Eee PC. When I first half-jokingly proposed the idea of going cold turkey on all my other computers, I figured it would be much more difficult. While it hasn't been all kittens and tulips, I must say my overall experience with the Eee has been enjoyable.

Since today marks the completion of approximately 1/14^th of the experiment, I thought it might be fitting to give my initial pros and cons of the Eee PC. If they change enough maybe I'll do an updated list every week.

Pros

Size

The idea of a tiny laptop was what drew me to the Eee in the first place, but I wasn't sure if the novelty would wear off. How would I handle a screen roughly the size of one on an ATM, and a chicklet-sized keyboard? Surprisingly it was quite easy to adapt, although I found myself typing with my pinky far more than I ever did before. Overall, I'm still impressed by the ultra-portability of the Eee. Besides, nothing looks cooler than walking down the hall carrying a laptop with one hand like a paperback book.

Battery

I've been getting about four hours of life before getting to 10% and plugging the Eee in. That's almost double what I usually get on my HP. I've yet to have it completely die on me.

Linux

I got into a Linux kick last fall, so I have about a year's experience on the operating system. I'm most comfortable with Ubuntu, and I have a desktop with Google's G Os, but I've played around with all the popular flavors. Maybe this is why I didn't feel too lost when I first started up the default Xandros system. I'm listing Linux as pro for all the usual reasons – open source, fast, and flawless. In the first week, I've only had one error message (with Firefox), and I think it was an Internet connectivity issue, and not with the operating system.

Cons

Linux

If I had bought the Eee before last fall, I might

be singing a different tune – and this is why I'm also adding Linux to my cons list. Using Synaptic and the console are second nature for me now, but newbies may run into some serious trouble. In terms of customization, the Eee only has extremes. Easy mode is too restrictive, and advanced mode is truly for the advanced user.

Wireless

I'm having one hell of a time connecting to wireless signals. To be fair, I have only had the opportunity to do so with my home router, so I need to do some testing to rule out the possibility that it's a problem outside of the Eee. On average though, it takes about six minutes to connect. I've googled this problem, and it seems to be a consistent woe on Eee forums and wikis. The machine detects the signal, but then hangs forever before connecting.

The dreaded pending screen...

Applications

Again, I'm comfortable using open source applications such as Pidgin, Thunderbird, and the OpenOffice suite, but I'm trying to write this from the perspective of a novice user. Xandros in advanced mode looks and feels much like Windows, so users may do some chin scratching when the try to click on a familiar-looking icon. Plus, even with Synaptic, downloading new applications can be iffy. There are no repositories, so that's an extra step to the usual search-and-install Synaptic bliss.